Microsoft's OCA Isn't Always Right

Before my desktop PC went up in smoke (yes, smoke...long story partially explained here) I was getting STOP errors frequently.

Because I foolishly trusted Microsoft, I thought it was a device driver conflict (between my sound card, my mainboard, my RAID card, and the Symantec Anti-Virus package I had) since that's what Online Crash Analysis was telling me.

When the STOPs were replaced with full on hangs, I decided that MOCA was way, way off target, and decided to do some exploratory surgery on my computer. The motherboard 20-pin connector was char-black from its original pristine white. Power supply decided it wanted to short out every now and then, or somesuch. Aha, so we identified the problem—it exists between keyboard and chair, for naievely trusting OCA.

For What It's Worth, never trust Microsoft's online crash analysis. Almost all publicly released drivers are stable enough to not cause recurrent STOPs, especially when everything's up to date. Do expect the occasional crash, but when it's recurring, don't expect OCA to be able to pin down the problem accurately enough for you. Do suspect device driver problems, but don't rule out hardware, especially if it recurs frequently.

This is probably all preaching to the choir, but maybe I'll save someone from having what I went through, chasing a ghost of a problem.

The OCA has worked for me for a few things, but strictly for software crashes.

I never believe them when they say a BSOD was driver related. In my experience it's always hardware related.

It has always come up completely wrong in my experience so I can understand your frustration.

The frustration ripped a hole in my wallet...but I wanted a 939 SLI system anyway...

Just a warning to others, I suppose. If we all learn from each other's mistakes, then we won't all be doomed to repeat them.

Maybe it's not 100% right but it's a tool to help you diagnose problems and thats a good thing. What if you had nothing at all? Common sense should tell you that a hardware problem can translate into a software error, no surprises there.

Your bad PSU/connector caused system instability and it in turn caused a software error, so OCA was not wrong at all. The error it reported actually happened due to your bad hardware. It just wasn't the ultimate cause of your problem.